


Turning Blood into Ink

by BloodAndPaper



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5085862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodAndPaper/pseuds/BloodAndPaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AKA: A love affair with literature</p><p>Author’s Note: Please excuse the fact that some of the literature was technically not written at the time Carmilla was put into the coffin.  I pulled from my own source of personal favorites and life-altering publications to fill the voids. </p><p>She said her elaborate farewells to her friends. Goodbye Shakespeare. Goodbye Keats. Poe.  Socrates.  Plato. She and Kipling would never again trudge through dark jungles.  She would never again journey to new worlds with Lewis. Or fight dragons with Tolkien. She would never again ride upon the Nautilus with Verne. This saddened her more than death…and she began to cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Blood into Ink

Strong arms grabbed her from behind. A black sack was thrown over her head. Carmilla Karnstein fought.  Oh did she fight, but the strength of these arms did not yield to her struggles.  This creature was not human – was not even vampire.  This was the strength of something that had lived for centuries, possibly even millennia. This was a strength she knew all too well.  This was Mother.

So her punishment was to be enacted. She knew that if she pushed too far that Mother’s patience with her would run out, but she thought she’d be beaten by one of her goons, or forced into some form of brainwashed servitude. Not this – this personal visit from Hell’s very own den mother. 

Her senses were betraying her. She smelled damp earth. Heard the sound of metal scraping against rocks.  The sound of stone scraping against stone.  These sounds and smells did not add up with the visions in her mind, and fruitlessly, she formed new hypotheses about the tortures she would face.

When the noises stopped, the lack of sound is what deafened her, clawing into her ears like a parasite, burrowing into her brain and making itself at home.  Had she known just how long she’d have to play host to this parasitic silence, she would have struggled harder. 

She was lifted – like a child – into the air. When her body settled against hard stone, it should have been her cue to leap, to run, to escape. But there was no point. She was no match for her Mother, and angering her further would only prolong this punishment.

So she stilled her body and gave in to the acquiescence that had been softly knocking at her consciousness since she’d first felt the strong arms.  The silence was broken by the scraping of stone – slowly getting louder and louder. When it was so loud that it vibrated her entire being, the noise ceased.  The sack was removed from her head and she struggled with the decision to open her eyes from the sheer curiosity, or keep them closed in one last show of defiance.

But then she smelled it.  The overwhelming smell of something so familiar, so necessary to her existence.  It was tainted. Rotten. Dead for far too long.

And then she felt it.  Pooling around her, seeping into her clothes. Coating her skin.

She tightened her eyes even further. She would not let them see her fear. The blood crept into her ears, silencing everything.  She had no heartbeat with which to keep cadence.  She had no breath to fill the air with soft, frightened panting.

The blood continued to rise around her, and when she finally allowed herself breath again, the smell hung in her throat, choking her. She would not gag. She would not cough. She kept her face as stoic as she could manage. 

Then the blood filled her nostrils and she stilled her breath one last time.  Her eyes flew open in a terrified search for the creature that had put her here. She didn’t have to look very far before she found her Mother. 

The woman’s eyes were soft in a way Carmilla had rarely seen.  She could not hear the words as they dripped, venomously from perfect lips, but she knew what Mother was saying.  And before the blood filled her eyes, coating the world in a dull red tinge, she felt, rather than heard, the last words that would be uttered for decades.

_“This is going to hurt me far more than it will hurt you, dear child...”_

Then the world was red.  And silent. The coffin was closed and all faded to black.

She felt the vibrations as the dirt was shoveled onto the grave – her grave.  It was then she realized that this punishment was not intended to be temporary. She opened her mouth to scream, but the toxic blood rushed passed her lips like a dam had burst. She had no choice but to shallow.

She felt her strength leave her almost immediately, but still pushed futilely against the coffin, trying in vain to shift the stone top.  Then the vibrations ceased and her world become this – and only this.

Had hours passed?  Days?  Years? Perhaps centuries…

The choice between starvation and slowly poisoning herself loomed in the forefront of her mind. What would happen if one slowly ingested these toxins, little by little, over time?  Would she die?  Would she become immune? If she did die, what would happen then?

Thus began Carmilla Karnstein’s love affair with philosophy.  She’d always considered herself a Nihilist. Through the years, she’d argued many times that one could still find value in a world without life after death. The mantra of _make the most of the time you’re given_ echoing in her brain with each debate. 

How then, could she accept this theory now? When her life had been reduced to this. _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ crept into her conscious thought, and she wished she had given Marquez more thought.  More of her time.  Her valued, not-taken-for-granted time.  She longed for the _city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it._ She craved the gentle lapping of waves against the riverbank. If there was an afterlife, she wished it to be Macondo, if only to inevitably relive the misfortunes of her own personal history. 

Years. Centuries.

The coffin was half drained of blood by now. She was weak – so very weak – but still she lived on.  Eliot had new meaning. A new world to be explored in the symbolism of _The Waste Land._ In the Hyacinth Girl. Belladonna.  The lady of the rocks. The Unreal City.

 

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.”

 

This symbolism was not lost on her.

Her lips were dry and cracked. Her body ached with each small movement she attempted.  Her throat burned with a thirst that could not be quenched by this stale, rotten filth.

Years. Centuries.

She’d recited every Shakespeare play she could recall, each character a miraculous escape into familiar worlds. Bohemia. Verona. Mantua. Tarsus. 

She’d analyzed the merit of _Waiting for Godot_.  Felt the shame of the bright red ‘A’ burning against her breast. Streaked her red cheeks with fresh trails of white skin as she’d recited Emmeline Pankhurst’s _Freedom or Death._ She’d taken journeys, on sheep-back, with Candide, and fought against Don Quixote’s windmills. 

She slowly began the process of disassociation. Was she _in_ the world – or _was_ she the world?  Was the reality outside of these stones walls, or had it all been an elaborate façade her mind had devised to keep her sanity.  Maybe _this_ was the reality. Her castigation. She could not remember her crimes. Perhaps _she_ had sat at Julius Ceasar’s table, as his confidante. Perhaps _she_ had sold the savior of the modern world for thirty pieces of silver. Perhaps she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time… 

 Years. Centuries.

The coffin was almost empty now. Soon she would give into to the starvation that was clawing at her insides.  Soon the greatest mysteries of the world would reveal themselves. What is life?  What is our role in it?  What comes after? 

She said her elaborate farewells to her friends. Goodbye Shakespeare. Goodbye Keats. Poe.  Socrates.  Plato. She and Kipling would never again trudge through dark jungles.  She would never again journey to new worlds with Lewis. Or fight dragons with Tolkien. She would never again ride upon the Nautilus with Verne. This saddened her more than death…and she began to cry.

The ground around her shook with the fury of her sobs. For hours it went on, and when she had no tears left, the violent shaking of the earth did not subside. And then the shattering of stone shook her from her disillusionment.  The earth rained down around her like a gentle caress, and she heard voices.

_“Dear God! What is it?”_

_“It’s a young girl.  What sort of war torture is this?”_

She opened her mouth to speak. “Water,” she croaked out.

_“She’s alive! Get her water!”_

_“Sir, I only have a flask of champagne.”_

_“Then that will have to do."_  

She opened her eyes and saw nothing but a vast expanse of stars, spanning the night sky.  Then the first, cool, thirst-quenching liquid was being poured down her throat.

Thus began Carmilla Karnstein’s new love affair…


End file.
